Such Selfish Prayers
by FancyFreeThinker101
Summary: I have asked you for many things, Tom Riddle, but the one thing I never wanted was forgiveness. (Surely we both know better than that now.) Bellatrix L./Tom Riddle. Slight AU.


Such Selfish Prayers

_I'm not here looking for absolution_

_Because I've found myself an old solution_

_-Florence and the Machine_

AN: Reviews please! This is a bit of a mess, so sorry in advance.

Of all the things I wanted from you, Tom, I never wanted mercy.

Remember that next time you pull me into razor sharp corners and tattoo violent violet patterns on my neck. Remember that when you look at me with those ice blue eyes and tell me, in a voice like steel-edged velvet, how ambitious I am.

I have asked you for many things, Tom Riddle, but the one thing I never wanted was forgiveness. (Surely we both know better than that now.)

I remember, with awful clarity, how you looked that first time when I walked boldly up to you out by the Black Lake and asked to join your numbers. I remember your raised eyebrows (shadows on your chill pale face) and the sharp, moon-white austerity of your features. I remember your cruel fine mouth and how I wanted to drown in it.

"Bellatrix," you said. "I don't think you understand your request."

"I think I do," I said—and everyone around me caught their breath. Two hooded figures toward the back started to come forward like shadows at dusk—but you inclined your head and they stopped.

(You were so marvelous, I thought: obeyed without a word.

_Oh, how I wanted to be the one to obey you_.)

"Be careful, Bellatrix Lestrange," you said. "Be very careful."

And your eyes swept over me once (a look that burned white hot lines up my legs and along my neck) and I just looked at you and the air was too heavy to breathe.

You told me to be careful, Tom, but I was barely seventeen and I didn't listen.

That was the first thing I wanted, and it cost me my soul.

The second thing I wanted of you, Tom Riddle, I got without asking.

"So late, Bellatrix Lestrange? Our—meeting of friends is long over. Slughorn's gone to bed—surely you should follow his example."

You were a destroying angel in the lamplight, eyebrows raised as you looked at me, the girl lost in the shadows. I shrugged, perilously bold. You and I were alone and it was late and I knew my own fatal prettiness then: the heavy lidded eyes and the dark wild hair and the cold white skin and the blood red mouth.

"I'm not tired," I said. You smirked; each movement of your mouth was as precise and merciless as sculpture.

"Well, you should be in your dorm—surely you don't want to lose points after hours."

"I don't care," I said, shrugging. "Points are nothing to me."

Your laughter was cool and brittle as polished glass.

"You're quite the grown-up young woman, Bellatrix," you said, your voice all the softer for the knife edge of mockery there.

And then you were very close, your cold steel hands on my tingling arms and your eyes on my neck, the shiver of my breath.

"Oh, yes—quite a lady," you whispered, smiling again. And then you kissed me like the end of the world and I couldn't breathe, even if I wanted to. Your mouth was not cold but it was hard, and your hands clutched my arms like you wanted to bruise them, pinning them to the wall as crimson bloomed behind my startled eyelids.

You stopped (I had no say over the start or the end or the middle), and you were neat and devastating in the light, all gloating eyes like stars from hell and that fine, killing mouth.

With one sharp, irresistible movement, you pinned my arm against the wall, smiling at the vulnerable paleness of its underside, at the shadowy markings at the crease of the elbow and up.

"Good," you said. "I like to leave a mark."

You smirked like the two of us had some secret; I could feel blood booming in every orifice of my body.

Your fingers were soft on my arm now, stretching it before you and swirling lazy patterns along the bruises.

"I hope to see you later, Bellatrix," you whispered, smiling right into my eyes (God you were such a killer even then.)

The second thing I wanted I got without even meaning to, without even asking. You took me one night a week later in the startling dark of your dormitory, bewitched me with your cold smooth voice into bed and fucked me with a thoroughness that rattled my skeleton around.

"Are you hurt?" you asked carelessly afterward, glancing at your own impossible beauty in the mirror. You were even colder and more alien by moonlight, and I shivered, naked beneath the sheet.

"Not really."

"You will be."

And then you bent and kissed me again—a brief, wrenching kiss that threw my heart around the room and against the chilly windows.

"Tom," I whispered against your mouth, the words forced out of my mouth, "Tom, is it—it's only me, isn't it?"

You paused, your eyes tracing slowly over my face. There was something very hard just beneath the caresses in your face, in your mouth, some edge just beneath your tongue, and I wanted I wanted I wanted so _badly_ not to see it.

"Yes, darling," you whispered, that mouth smiling slightly. "Yes, of course. Only you."

That was the second thing I wanted from you, Tom Marvolo Riddle, and it nearly killed me.

After that, it was so often—so often and so unexpected and always on your terms. You would leave notes in my dinner or in my bag, notes with just two things on them: a time and a place.

_My dorm, midnight._

_Transfiguration classroom, first floor, 7 PM. _

Only once did you add anything else, some personal extra to the girl whose heart you were biting into with such awful precision.

_Wear black_.

I still have that note, you know—even now. It's tucked into my wardrobe, just beneath some formal dress robes.

_Wear black_

Whispers started—whispers about that Bellatrix Lestrange with the wild, black eyes and the shaking laughter that erupted out of her shoulders. Whispers about her and Tom Riddle—speculations, thinly veiled, about how long it would last.

I was young enough and stupid enough to pity them.

The summer after my final year, you marked me for your own—just as you'd always done with that white-hot mouth on my neck and my shoulders and my arms. You made a mark on my dead white arm and you made it black—black like your hair and black like your soul, Tom Riddle—and every line you burned was a promise and a warning: this was my life, this was my work.

This was my leader.

So that summer passed, a tangle of meetings and circles of black hooded figures and cold, exulted ceremony and midnights passing into early morning and dark marks all up my arms and along my neck. Bluish constellations of bruises, following the restless patterns of your long, fine hands with the fingers that could kill.

You pinned me back against the sheets as startling white as screams in the dark, and I lost myself in the welter of burning blue and gold and crimson that was blooming behind my eyelids. Your hands found my wrists, pulling them over my head, and I laughed aloud (laughter burning blue and gold and white) in gaudy exultation at the feeling of your mouth on my neck.

You played the game rough, Tom, but you played it so well.

But the game was too good to last—too good to last because one day I walked into the woods and there you were, smiling that coiled snake smile at my sister—my young blonde sister with the white gold hair like sunlight and the fatal, innocent eyes. My sister who looked like she'd wandered into her black hood (and into your black bed) on accident.

"Bellatrix," you said, smiling over her shoulder at me, lethal and unashamed. "Come. Join us. We're all friends here."

_Friends._ Bile burned at my throat; I never wanted to be your friend, Tom Riddle.

But I came (you were born to be obeyed, Tom), and when you didn't send for me I sat in my room in a wild, dark panic, laughing nauseously.

But you would still send—when you wanted me. When you weren't busy pulling screams out of the pale gold throat of my pretty little sister.

Then the planning stopped, and the killing started, and I would watch you in the wild flashes of green light, watch the cold, bright triumph in your eyes and the loving way you slashed your wand through the air.

I didn't care after a while. One cadaver is very much like another. It was better, really—you were lighter after you killed, colder and lighter and deadly playful. Something inside you was satisfied.

But as I watched, I would imagine your mouth trailing down my ribs—and later, when no one could see, I would vomit green and gray and ugly crimson into a nearby bush.

So remember that, Tom, the next time you send for me—because of course you still do, when there isn't someone else. I have wanted so many things from you, Tom Riddle—but one thing I have never wanted is your pity. I've made you a promise in my blood and I'll blow the world red to pay you back, drop by drop. I will bow before you, my Lord, but you'll never get me on my knees. You call me, with dangerous laughter, ambitious—I guess I am. I tried too hard to get too much—an aching astronomer determined to fit the moon between my teeth. That ruined everything—I could have been so happy as just a disciple, tearing the world apart so you could build your garden. But they will never know (I am a Lestrange and we're a proud people) and you will never know (I am a Death Eater and a silent servant) and so we'll go on.

We'll finish this game how we started it—rough and merciless, backs against the cold stone wall.


End file.
